On The Donald, Carrie Prejean's Statement, and Free Speech

The most recent kerfuffle over Carrie Prejean has to do with recent suggestions that she would be stripped of her "Miss California" crown for lingerie pictures she posed for at seventeen. However, one of the greatest thinkers and handsomest men of our modern era, Donald Trump, has brought the hammer down on this notion.

Miss California USA can retain her crown even though she failed to reveal she had posed in her underwear as a teenager, pageant owner Donald Trump said Tuesday.

Carrie Prejean appeared by Trump's side as he made the announcement at New York's Trump Tower.

Trump also defended the answer that Prejean gave at last month's Miss USA pageant when she was asked her view of marriage by judge Perez Hilton, a celebrity blogger. She said she believes marriage is between a man and a woman.

"It's the same answer the president of the United States gave; it's the same answer many people gave," Trump said. "She gave an honorable answer; she gave an answer from her heart."

Trump said he and other pageant officials had reviewed racy photos of Prejean and decided they were acceptable.

"We are in the 21st century. We have determined the pictures taken are fine," he said, adding that "in some cases the pictures were lovely."

Heh. "In some cases." There's something sardonic about The Donald that Harrogate has always found appealing, however much Harrogate has tried to rebel against liking anything about the guy.

But enough about bad hair, smirks, and the like. In the clip below, Carrie Prejean commits the same error that so many Americans in and out of academia make. She states that she exercised her First Amendment rights on the stage when Perez asked her about gay marriage. This is of course true. But then she makes the leap into asserting that those same rights, for which her grandfather fought, were violated in the backlash that followed. Tied up in this of course is the notion that the Miss USA judges violated her First Amendment Rights when they allegedly deprived her of victory as punishment for her opinions.




Sorry, Miss Prejean, but ye are full of it here. The First Amendment protects you from facing government retribution for speaking your mind. It most certainly does NOT protect you or anyone else from being publically demonized for your opinions. This is part of the American tradition, too. Perez, classless as he is, was exercising HIS free speech rights when he called you a "Cunt," among other epithets. You might think of it as "punishment," but it is not a violation of your free speech rights for people to make fun of you or to villify your opinions. These, like it or not, are often the consequences of weighing in on a hotbutton issue in the American discourse.

All that being said. Harrogate, again, totally disagrees with Prejean's stated opinion, but also thinks that many on the Left have behaved very badly in demonizing her for what she said. Harrogate has established that in his opinion, when you look at the whole fiasco objectively, people like Olbermann and Perez look much, much worse as human beings, than does Prejean. And of course, Prejean's champions in the media, people like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity etc., are already wastes of skin who make their living spreading lies and hate, so who really cares where they fit into this particular equation?

And Miss Prejean, as for the judges. They are free to use whatever criterion they wish, especially since you will never be able to prove that you would have won but for offering said opinion.

Man is stabbed for farting

You've got to read this one.

An Ideologue Responds to Bristol Palin's Interview, Declares it an Uncomfortable Experience

Recently, Supadiscomama celebrated Bristol Palin's handling of her first television interview--particularly Britol's refreshing acknowledgment that abstinence-only education is unrealistic, and her assertion of personal choice with regards to her own pregnancy.

As Sarah Palin remains a model for all that the Republican Party ought to be in the eyes of Townhall bloggers, it was only a matter of time before one of them would break the silence on Bristol's interview, and go into spin control mode.

Asserting that the interview was awkward and "painful to get through," Ericka Andersen today writes that:

In between eye aversions and like, not wanting to get into personal details, Bristol gave us no more insight than a typical confession segment on the Real World. She said she wanted to "prevent" teen pregnancy but called abstinence an "unrealistic" way to think because "its more accepted now" to have sex outside of marriage at a young age. Van Susteren reminded that Bristol's mother supports abstinence-only education. Bristol sounded just like herself -- a teenager who just had a baby out of wedlock.

The money component of all of this is of course the implication that a pregnant, unmarried teenager is hardly qualified to weigh in on the desireability or effectiveness of abstinence-only education.

"So Bristol Palin has spoken and Tripp has been seen by the world," Andersen concludes, compassionately adding: "Here's to hoping I avoid anymore cringe-worthy interviews like this one."

Rough when hard doctrine runs up against the human experience one supposes. If only there were no people out there, everything would be perfect.


FORTUITOUS UPDATE

The gates appear to have opened on denying Bristol Palin's credibility on the cultural issue which she has, largely through the efforts of people like Marybeth Hicks, come to emblematize. Hicks in this column disparages the notion of realism altogether when it comes to unmarried teen sex. She offers the totally applicable analogy of a parent expecting their kids to put their shoes in the desginated spot by the door, even with the full knowledge that kids will keep putting shoes where they want.

This snippet here perfectly illustrates Hicks' impregnable (heh) reasoning:

Miss Palin may think her parents' advice regarding abstinence was unrealistic, but I think that was the 18-year-old daughter talking.

The 18-year-old mother will soon discover that unrealistic expectations drive the parenting bus.

With time and experience, perhaps she'll discover that we parents have another name for those unrealistic expectations. We call them "ideals."

Again, the sheer doctrinal hubris of these people, their willingness to dismiss reality itself even as they insist the right to appropriate the ideals of "we parents," is simply stunning.